These are a few of my favorite things!

Welcome to my new blog! It's been over two years since I last wrote a blog post, so bear with me. So much has happened in those two years, but I'll get around to all of that later. Right now I thought what better way to kick off a blog than with a PARTY! The blog is called Pillows, Parties, and Potatoes after all. 

For those of you who know me, you know I love to play hostess any chance I get. This started at a very young age when my mother gave me Martha Stewart's Entertaining book as a gift for my 13th birthday.

This is the book my mother gave me, Martha circa 1982 on the cover!

Twenty something years later I still look to Martha for inspiration along with the wonder that is Pinterest; and the love of entertaining still has a hold on me. That being said I am excited to share with you my most recent soiree. 

Last night I hosted a Favorite Things Party. A Favorite Things Party is loosely based, and I stress the word loosely, on the Oprah episodes where she gave each audience member some of her favorite things. Sadly we did not give out cars and dream vacations, but each of the girls went home with some fun new goodies...just on a much, much smaller scale! 

Priceless reactions of Oprah's audience members to her favorite things giveaways!

This is how it works: Each guest brought their favorite thing to the party (favorite lip gloss and nail polish, favorite kitchen gadget, favorite dvd, favorite cookbook, etc.). I set a price limit between $12- $15, and each girl brought three of that same favorite thing. When they arrived at the party they wrote their name on three slips of paper and put it in a bowl. One at a time each guest introduced their favorite thing and then drew three names from the bowl. Each of those three party guest then received that person’s favorite thing! So at the end of the night each lucky lady went home with three fun new gifts! 

To determine the order of presenting our favorite things I created a favorite things game card. Each lady had to answer the questions:  favorite color, favorite celebrity crush, favorite beverage, and favorite vacation destination. Then the cards were read aloud and we had to guess who the card belonged to. That person was then the next one to stand up and present their favorite thing gift. With these ladies their favorite beverage was the dead giveaway!

I have a love of polka dots, you might say they're my favorite pattern! So I used them as a party theme along with pops of red and turquoise, and a little play on the Sound of Music song "My Favorite Things". I made this cute banner and wrapped up "brown paper packages, tied up with strings" for the mantel. I have a cute polka dot table cloth, fun polka dot paper straws, and I even put white chocolate polka dots on my chocolate covered strawberries! I love details like that, don't you?! 

I have several great pictures of my party decor and my fabulous party guests, but I forgot to take pictures of the favorite things themselves (total blog fail)! However to give you an idea of what kind of gifts included here is a list:

• a microplaner/zester favorite kitchen gadget 
• a yoga mat from our favorite yoga instructor friend 
• a casserole carrier (lucky me I was picked for this one!)
• gourmet coffee
• a yummy smelling Hawaiian coconut candle
• an amazing hand lotion bar 
• fun girls night in and movie packages that included nail polish, dvds, popcorn, oreos, etc. 
• A cute gardening package with gloves, watering can, awesome book with great recipes and even a jar of homemade bread and butter pickles! 
• a TJ Maxx gift card! 
• and I contributed my favorite infinity scarf  in vibrant colors made out of soft crinkly cotton! from my favorite shopping destination Nordstrom!    

Me and my true favorite thing, my baby girl Logan, and yes she is dressed to match my party decor!

Finally, I put together a fun swag bag for each guest that included a few of my favorite little indulgences and provided a bag for them to tote home their other goodies in. It included a recent issue of HGTV magazine because I watch HGTV constantly and loooove to decorate, a little box of Trader Joe's dark chocolate covered almonds, and a container of the most delicious greek yogurt-a Chobani Coco Loco flip! Yes a shameless plug, the hubby works for Chobani, but seriously the flips are delicious almost desert like!

Here's me 7 months preggers in heels sharing the details of the swag bag!

Overall I think the party and the concept were a hit. Who knows, maybe it will become an annual event! I better get to planning the next one only 364 more days to go!